As houses age, homeowners oftentimes upgrade bathrooms, kitchens, and other areas of their homes by installing a new wall surface or covering. Installation of the new wall surface typically causes all electrical components, such as duplex outlets and light switches, and their associated electrical boxes to become recessed within the new wall and can lead to an unsafe condition in which the cover plate does not seal around the electrical box. In order to remedy this situation, the homeowner can reinstall all the electrical boxes with their components level with the newly installed surface. However, this option is labor intensive and time consuming, and usually requires the services of a certified electrician.
Recently, to accommodate the needs of homeowners, manufacturers are providing electrical box cover plates in various sizes, such as standard, mid-size, max-size. Although various devices have been proposed for bringing electrical boxes level with newly installed walls, these devices are limited for use in repositioning a standard size cover plate and their use in installing mid-size and max-size cover plate requires extensive and time consuming modification at the job site.
Accordingly, what is needed is an apparatus and method that enables simple and effective repositioning of an electrical box to render its installed component level with a newly installed wall.